Tegan Chronicles

Affairs of Love 6

"Do you remember?" Janet looked away from her patient.

"Remember?"

"Anything from the last couple of days?" She knew from Jack's exam he still had some memories intact, most of which thoroughly embarrassed him.

Tegan shrugged her shoulders, "Maybe."

"I need to know what you remember." Janet picked up her medical chart as an excuse. "Do you remember trying to kiss me?"

"I? I tried to kiss you?" A huge smile spread across Tegan's lips, and Janet wasn't sure what it meant. "You're kidding right?"

"No." She tried not to sound disappointed or offended.

"Would you have liked it?" The question was almost too somber and Janet looked up falling into swirling pools of green.

"What?" Her voice cracked as Tegan's thumb caressed her chin. Her knees started to turn into a gelatinous mass as Tegan licked her bottom lip.

"Would you have liked it," Tegan leaned in towards her lips, "if I'd done this?"

"I'm home!" The slamming of the front door jarred Janet from her dream.

Her face flushed as she tried to clear the vision from her head.

"Mom, you ok?" Cassie towered over her.

"I'm fine." She twisted her skull on its axis. "I just fell asleep in the chair."

"Oh." Cassie dropped her backpack on the couch. "What's for dinner?"

"I was thinking about pizza from Fernando's."

"Really?" Cassie's smile broadened.

Janet nodded.

"We're going to eat there?"

"You've got to finish your homework first."

"Is Tegan home?" Cassie unzipped her backpack.

"I'm not sure." Janet's brow wrinkled. "Why?"

"I've got an English paper I've been working on, and it's fifty percent of our six weeks' grade. I wanted her to proof it for me."

"You can call her and see. In the meantime I'm going to get a shower." *A cold one.*

"Can I invite her to dinner?"

"I don't care, if she's at home." Janet pushed herself out of the chair certain Tegan would decline the invitation.

"Over here!" Cassie waved her arms in the air when she saw Tegan come in clad in a pair of faded jeans, a white tank top with a partially buttoned chocolate brown blouse over it. From her choice of Birks, Janet deduced she'd driven the Porsche. "We ordered a large pepperoni."

"If you want something else you can order it." Janet offered.

"No, that sounds great." She slipped her square wire framed Oakley's off and laid them along side her keys on the table, as she slid into a chair. "Did you bring it?"

Cassie pulled her notebook computer out, and suddenly Janet wondered why she couldn't have just emailed the file to Tegan to proof read? She decided not to worry about it as she watched Tegan read the paper. She glanced at her attire and wondered why some days Tegan was dressed to the nines or for casual situations at least sevens, carrying a purse, doing the complete La Femme fashion look; and other days she looked more the part of the butch detective. Not that she ever really saw Tegan as butch, but tomboy occasionally came to mind. Like right now, despite how her outfit totally rocked out her figure, Janet could easily see her throwing on her leather riding jacket and sitting in that chair backwards.

Her rumination was interrupted by the waiter bringing out a piping hot twenty-one inch pizza. She was thankful for the distraction.

"Drink?" He pointed to Tegan.

"Uh," Tegan glanced around the table. "Water."

"With lemon." Cassie added with a smile.

"With lemon." Tegan nodded looking at the pizza. "Are you sure this is a large?"

"Yes." Janet pulled a slice off and handed it to Cassie. "Their extra large is twenty five inches."

"Ouch!" Tegan pulled her hand back and sucked the hot gooey cheese and sauce off her thumb as the slice she'd grabbed landed on her plate.

"Are you ok?" Janet wasn't going to survive the night at this rate.

"Fine." Tegan spoke around the thumb in her mouth.

She finished reading Cassie's paper while her pizza cooled. "It looks good to me kid, I'd give it a solid A."

"Really?"

"Yup." Tegan picked up her pizza and took a bite. It was still hot but not alarming so.

She took in Janet for the first time that evening, her brunette hair that had been pinned up that day at work now fell softly on the shoulders of her light pink blouse. There was never a time that Janet didn't look one hundred percent feminine, Tegan thought, except when she was in full biohazardous gear, and then everyone looked alien. She shook her finger as the juke box started playing, in three notes she knew the song. "I like this one; 'Sitting in the morning sun, I'll be sitting when the evening comes. Watching the ships roll in, I'll watch them roll away again.'"

"You're embarrassing me." Cassie looked around, and even though Tegan hadn't been singing loud she'd drawn quite a few interested stares.

"Sorry," She apologized and raised her glass to her audience. She looked at Cassie. "Its habit, I sometimes just can't help myself."

"Is that all you're going to eat?" Cassie asked as she grabbed a second slice.

"Yes." Tegan rubbed her stomach. "I'm full."

"Then I don't know why you bothered to come."

"Because you invited me, besides your mom only ate one slice."

"She always only eats one slice, and then she'll have another before she goes to bed."

"And I bet you eat two more cold for breakfast in the morning?"

"Not if I get downstairs first." Janet jumped in.

"Which is why she hasn't won mother of the year yet." Cassie continued to munch on her pizza.

"Ah, want to know why she hasn't won doctor of the year?"

Cassie nodded eagerly.

"Because she gives your uncle Jack shots."

"He hates shots." Janet added.

Tegan glanced at her watch and stood up. "I should get going."

"Hot date?" Cassie ignored the warning look her mother gave her.

"Video conference with an old colleague." Tegan pulled her wallet out of her back pocket.

Janet didn't need to ask if it was Greg, she already knew. "I've got dinner."

Tegan dropped the ten on the table. It was already out of her wallet.

"You're part wouldn't have been that much anyway."

"Use it how you want Janet, but if you don't put it toward dinner, someone's getting a really nice tip, for not refilling our drinks."